#47 in Biography & memoir
Papillon
- 560
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Papillon” remains a prison-escape tale of rare drive, told with a born storyteller’s relish. Henri Charrière recounts fourteen years of captivity in and flight from the penal colony in French Guiana, brutal in what it shows and lively in the telling. He presented it as largely true, though researchers think much of it drew on other prisoners’ experiences; some readers shrug at that, while others find the endlessly helpful strangers hard to believe.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Papillon is a novel written by Henri Charrière, first published in France on 30 April 1969. Papillon is Charrière's nickname. The novel supposedly details Papillon's incarceration and subsequent escape from the French penal colony of French Guiana, and covers a 14-year period between 1931 and 1945. While Charrière claimed that Papillon was largely true, modern researchers believe that much of the book's material came from other inmates, rather than Charrière himself.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.4 across 127 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 46% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Biography & memoir average of 8.1. That is how 8.2 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.9 | 19 | 15% |
| Hardcover | 8.3 | 108 | 85% |
Frequently asked
How long is Papillon?
It has 560 pages — longer than 92% of the ranked books in Biography & memoir.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Biography & memoir — with scores between 8.2 and 8.4, closest to this book.
